California will appeal a federal judge's ruling that declared the state's death penalty unconstitutional, Attorney General Kamala Harris said Thursday, arguing that the ruling would actually reduce the rights of capital defendants in order to speed up executions.

In his decision July 16, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney said delays of 25 years or more in deciding appeals and carrying out occasional executions in California have created a capricious and irrational system that serves no legitimate purpose.

He said the "dysfunctional administration of California's death penalty system" - with delays of many years in appointing lawyers and awaiting court rulings - "has resulted in the arbitrary selection of a small handful of individuals for execution."

For most of the 748 condemned prisoners, a death sentence actually means "life in prison, with the remote possibility of death," said Carney, an appointee of President George W. Bush.

California, with the nation's largest Death Row, has not held an execution since 2006, when a federal judge found multiple flaws in the state's lethal-injection procedures. The state reinstated the death penalty in 1977, after a previous law was ruled unconstitutional, and has executed 13 inmates since 1992.

Harris personally opposes the death penalty but has defended death sentences in court cases, including the Orange County rape-murder case before Carney. Her appeal moves the case to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, whose ruling will apply statewide - unlike Caney's, which affects only a single case.

In a brief statement, Harris said she was appealing the ruling "because it is not supported by the law, and it undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants. This flawed ruling requires appellate review."

Asked what "important protections" would be undermined, Harris' office said Carney appeared to be calling for speedier executions, with fewer rights for defendants. Carney said in his ruling, however, that the delays were due to flaws in the state's system, which takes many years to appoint defense lawyers and rule on inmates' appeals.